The Left's Disowning of the Soviet Union

[Pandeeria]

I disagree. The USSR despised racism, antisemitism and sexism. The far right promoted it. The main difference in the USSR were not pacifists.

Hardly, From Stalin onwards the USSR was a terrible place to be if you were gay, and racism and sexism equally came out in various places.

Homosexuality was regarded as a bourgeoisie habit; and if we look at the Western world today, we can see that that has proved quite correct...[/quote]

No, it hasn't The west is simply more accepting of diversity than shit stain regimes in the East.

[Osaginado]

In the case of the Soviet Union, some degree of totalitarianism was necessary, at least in Stalin's time.

How was the Stalin period (1922-1939, 1945-1953 -- I acknowledge that the WWII period was genuinely exceptional) more dangerous than the pre-Stalin period, especially the period of the Civil War and imperialist invasion?

[Mattopilos]

Hardly, From Stalin onwards the USSR was a terrible place to be if you were gay, and racism and sexism equally came out in various places.

Homosexuality was regarded as a bourgeoisie habit; and if we look at the Western world today, we can see that that has proved quite correct...

No, it hasn't The west is simply more accepting of diversity than shit stain regimes in the East.[/quote]

To be fair, western societies can be pretty spotty on the whole homophobia and racism thing, especially in America. Overall, your point is very true, though.

[Osaginado]

IDK how this can be squared with the source material. Marx:

[Snip passage from the Communist Manifesto]

Marx explicitly foresaw a state, imposing state policy, that is interventionist and authoritarian in character.

And the final paragraph isn't quite the "state withering away" it is often presented as. The somewhat bizarre argument he actually makes is that the proletarians, having exterminated all their enemies, will no longer be supreme as supremacy must be defined related to an oppressed opposition that will no longer exist. One could make a very similar argument for the "withering away" of the Nazi occupation government of Poland as it simply murdered all the Poles, thus removing its need to exist.

OK, so let's review....

First, the passage from the Manifesto you cite, which includes the platform of measures that a Communist government would implement, is meant to address the democratic revolutions that Marx and Engels saw on the horizon. That is, the platform itself is NOT designed for a workers' republic -- the proletarian dictatorship; the transition from capitalism to communism -- but rather for a democratic republic transitioning from European absolutist feudalism to capitalism, carried out by a proletarian, Communist regime, and preparing the ground for a revolution that would bring about the workers' republic.

Second, revolutionary periods are merciless teachers. Marx learned quite a lot from the experiences in France and Germany; he was an active participant in both. One of the first things he learned was that the proletarian party could not simply take over the existing state apparatus and expect it to change class allegiances. It was in the process of the French experience that he came to the conclusion that the old state had to be smashed and an anti-state (akin to an anti-hero in literature) in the form of the general arming of the proletariat organized to replace it and administer the transition. Both Marx and Engels acknowledged what they learned from the upheavals of 1848-1852 in several of the prefaces and introductions to the Manifesto written over the remainder of their years on earth.

Third, and finally, to refer to the abolition of classes as an "extermination" is the kind of twisting of words that would make Goebbels proud. While acts of political terror and "excess" are found in every revolution ("tar-and-feathering" and "running out on a rail", anyone?), there is no equating of the disappearance of classes with physical annihilation in any of the works of Marx and Engels. Communists are not bloodthirsty. If we can abolish classes by setting aside some Fletcher Memorial Island where the exploiting and oppressing classes can live out their days, that would be fine with me. Indeed, for many of those first-generation business owners -- people who worked most of their lives to save enough money to open a small shop or such -- it may be possible to apply their previously accrued productive labor-time to their lifetime Socially-Necessary Labor-Time Schedule, and retire them with full access to all goods and services shortly (if not immediately) after the new system replaces money.

[United Marxist Nations]

Also, can you give a source for the starvation in April 1932 according to Kosior?

It's asecondary source, I've been trying to find a link to the primary source, but I understand it is "Holod 1932-1933 rokiv na Ukraini:ochyma istorykiv, movoiu dokumentiv. Kyiv, 1990. P. 148."

I believe you, since you provided a source, but I can't see the text, so, for academic interest, could you provide the exact text in TG?

[United Marxist Nations]

In the case of the Soviet Union, some degree of totalitarianism was necessary, at least in Stalin's time.

How was the Stalin period (1922-1939, 1945-1953 -- I acknowledge that the WWII period was genuinely exceptional) more dangerous than the pre-Stalin period, especially the period of the Civil War and imperialist invasion?

The Soviet Union was diplomatically isolated, gravely wounded, had many enemies, and was preparing for the possibility of a second World War (which would ultimately come). To quote Stalin in 1931(?), "We are fifty or one-hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good upon this gap in ten years, or we will be crushed."

[United Marxist Nations]

I fully support and defend much of what the Soviet Union did. I'll condense my opinion into a single post.

Trotsky was an idealist who would have seen the USSR ruined within months due to his policy of permanent revolution. It took the centralisation and firm leadership of Stalin to oversee the development to fight the Germans in the interwar years, and only with the chaos left by the collapse of Germany in Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union able to spread communism westward.

Stalin predicted there would be a third world war, hence the establishment of buffer states as a temporary measure, in which socialism would be built in full once Europe was liberated from the capitalists. However, thanks to Khruschev (The Corn Lord) this would not happen. He appeased the west often and was rightfully removed from power, but this was too late. In its attempts to distance themselves from Stalin, the Soviet Union hurled into a path of degeneration and collapse into Social Democracy and then capitalism.

Stalin's idiocity in military affairs almost costed the Soviets ww2 and consequently 100% of europe's slavic population. He ordered the murder of most of the officer core and plenty of technical staff and deliberately blocked his remaining officers from preparing russia for a potential german invasion. It was stalin who hurled the Soviet Union onto a path of degeneration as he purged the country's intelligentsia, leading behind a leadership with more power then sense.

Leon on the other hand was an experienced military and economic leader. While Stalin was managing street thugs and building up his political power, Trotsky was working on kickstarting Russia's economy. He was a pioneer of NEP and opposing stalin's overblown authoritarianism and peasant-torturing grain runs. He didn't mind working with political enemies, even whites towards the common good of the country.

Trotsky over Stalin any day of the soviet calendar.

Purge is exaggerated and Stalin actually won his war. Trotsky couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper Poland.

[Osaginado]

Trotsky was an idealist who would have seen the USSR ruined within months due to his policy of permanent revolution. It took the centralisation and firm leadership of Stalin to oversee the development to fight the Germans in the interwar years, and only with the chaos left by the collapse of Germany in Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union able to spread communism westward.

Without getting into a big Trotsky-Stalin row, I would say that Trotsky was a petty-bourgeois intellectual who was far too influenced by the theoretical revisionism of social democracy and never fully understood Marxian communist theory. Of course, in my view, the same could be said, in varying degress, about the bulk of the central leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Nevertheless, they got enough things right to emerge as the political leadership of the October Revolution and the Soviet Republic, and that victory should never be forgotten.

That said, to argue that the USSR would have been "ruined within months" because of Trotsky's "policy of permanent revolution" is ridiculous. Up until 1930, Trotsky believed that his theory of permanent revolution (which has little in common with Marx's theory of permanent revolution, BTW) was only applicable to pre-revolutionary Russia. During the dispute over the Chinese Revolution in the mid-1920s, both Trotsky and Stalin advocated a bourgeois-democratic revolution. During the Polish-Soviet War, Trotsky opposed "exporting the revolution" at the point of a bayonet, instead advocating limiting the actions of the Red Army to the defense of the Russian SFSR and Ukrainian SSR; nevertheless, as Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council, he carried out all orders on the conduct of the war issued by the Sovnarkom. This is not so much a defense of Trotsky per se as it is a defense of documented historical fact. Even the Center and Right factions in the RCP(b), working in coalition, tacitly acknowledged this when they had to do an about face, and accuse Trotsky of minimizing the war danger and plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Republic, relying on such documents as the so-called "Clemenceau Thesis" and the Chamberlain slander.

And I would hardly consider the purging of the veteran commanders of the Red Army and Red Fleet (e.g., Tukhachevsky), the training of the Gestapo by NKVD instructors, and joint maneuvers between the Wehrmacht and Red Army, as measures that allowed the USSR "in the interwar years" to make the "development to fight the Germans". More to the point, the codicil to the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact that would have seen the Red Army fighting alongside the Wehrmacht in the event that France and Britain launched an offensive against Germany any time between September 1939 and June 1941 can hardly be justified as a step to defend the USSR by preparing it to "fight the Germans".

(And before this becomes another attempt to cry "bourgeois propaganda", everything stated above can be verified by obtaining access to the Soviet archives in Moscow -- a fact I know first-hand.)

[United Marxist Nations]

Trotsky was an idealist who would have seen the USSR ruined within months due to his policy of permanent revolution. It took the centralisation and firm leadership of Stalin to oversee the development to fight the Germans in the interwar years, and only with the chaos left by the collapse of Germany in Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union able to spread communism westward.

Without getting into a big Trotsky-Stalin row, I would say that Trotsky was a petty-bourgeois intellectual who was far too influenced by the theoretical revisionism of social democracy and never fully understood Marxian communist theory. Of course, in my view, the same could be said, in varying degress, about the bulk of the central leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Nevertheless, they got enough things right to emerge as the political leadership of the October Revolution and the Soviet Republic, and that victory should never be forgotten.

That said, to argue that the USSR would have been "ruined within months" because of Trotsky's "policy of permanent revolution" is ridiculous. Up until 1930, Trotsky believed that his theory of permanent revolution (which has little in common with Marx's theory of permanent revolution, BTW) was only applicable to pre-revolutionary Russia. During the dispute over the Chinese Revolution in the mid-1920s, both Trotsky and Stalin advocated a bourgeois-democratic revolution. During the Polish-Soviet War, Trotsky opposed "exporting the revolution" at the point of a bayonet, instead advocating limiting the actions of the Red Army to the defense of the Russian SFSR and Ukrainian SSR; nevertheless, as Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council, he carried out all orders on the conduct of the war issued by the Sovnarkom. This is not so much a defense of Trotsky per se as it is a defense of documented historical fact. Even the Center and Right factions in the RCP(b), working in coalition, tacitly acknowledged this when they had to do an about face, and accuse Trotsky of minimizing the war danger and plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Republic, relying on such documents as the so-called "Clemenceau Thesis" and the Chamberlain slander.

And I would hardly consider the purging of the veteran commanders of the Red Army and Red Fleet (e.g., Tukhachevsky), the training of the Gestapo by NKVD instructors, and joint maneuvers between the Wehrmacht and Red Army, as measures that allowed the USSR "in the interwar years" to make the "development to fight the Germans". More to the point, the codicil to the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact that would have seen the Red Army fighting alongside the Wehrmacht in the event that France and Britain launched an offensive against Germany any time between September 1939 and June 1941 can hardly be justified as a step to defend the USSR by preparing it to "fight the Germans".

(And before this becomes another attempt to cry "bourgeois propaganda", everything stated above can be verified by obtaining access to the Soviet archives in Moscow -- a fact I know first-hand.)

It was necessary to buy time for the Soviet Union to develop its military strength and to extend the border (i.e. the distance German troops would have to cross to reach Moscow) to defend the Soviet Union. It should be mentioned that the Soviets did not expect such a quick French capitulation, though.

[Dagashi Shojo]

I disagree. The USSR despised racism, antisemitism and sexism. The far right promoted it. The main difference in the USSR were not pacifists.

Hardly, From Stalin onwards the USSR was a terrible place to be if you were gay, and racism and sexism equally came out in various places.

Homosexuality was regarded as a bourgeoisie habit; and if we look at the Western world today, we can see that that has proved quite correct...[/quote]

Bullshit. Industrialized, liberalized countries just don't stone them to death like other, more backwards countries do. Up until recently, it sucked to be gay in the West, and in many areas, it still does. "Bourgeois" essentially became a snarl word that people could use to dismiss anything they didn't like.

[Harkback Union]

Stalin's idiocity in military affairs almost costed the Soviets ww2 and consequently 100% of europe's slavic population. He ordered the murder of most of the officer core and plenty of technical staff and deliberately blocked his remaining officers from preparing russia for a potential german invasion. It was stalin who hurled the Soviet Union onto a path of degeneration as he purged the country's intelligentsia, leading behind a leadership with more power then sense.

Leon on the other hand was an experienced military and economic leader. While Stalin was managing street thugs and building up his political power, Trotsky was working on kickstarting Russia's economy. He was a pioneer of NEP and opposing stalin's overblown authoritarianism and peasant-torturing grain runs. He didn't mind working with political enemies, even whites towards the common good of the country.

Trotsky over Stalin any day of the soviet calendar.

Purge is exaggerated and Stalin actually won his war. Trotsky couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper Poland.

Zhukov won ww2 after stalin royally fucked up at the start, costing Russia tens of millions in lives.

[Alsheb]

Trotsky was an idealist who would have seen the USSR ruined within months due to his policy of permanent revolution. It took the centralisation and firm leadership of Stalin to oversee the development to fight the Germans in the interwar years, and only with the chaos left by the collapse of Germany in Eastern Europe was the Soviet Union able to spread communism westward.

Without getting into a big Trotsky-Stalin row, I would say that Trotsky was a petty-bourgeois intellectual who was far too influenced by the theoretical revisionism of social democracy and never fully understood Marxian communist theory. Of course, in my view, the same could be said, in varying degress, about the bulk of the central leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Nevertheless, they got enough things right to emerge as the political leadership of the October Revolution and the Soviet Republic, and that victory should never be forgotten.

That said, to argue that the USSR would have been "ruined within months" because of Trotsky's "policy of permanent revolution" is ridiculous. Up until 1930, Trotsky believed that his theory of permanent revolution (which has little in common with Marx's theory of permanent revolution, BTW) was only applicable to pre-revolutionary Russia. During the dispute over the Chinese Revolution in the mid-1920s, both Trotsky and Stalin advocated a bourgeois-democratic revolution. During the Polish-Soviet War, Trotsky opposed "exporting the revolution" at the point of a bayonet, instead advocating limiting the actions of the Red Army to the defense of the Russian SFSR and Ukrainian SSR; nevertheless, as Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council, he carried out all orders on the conduct of the war issued by the Sovnarkom. This is not so much a defense of Trotsky per se as it is a defense of documented historical fact. Even the Center and Right factions in the RCP(b), working in coalition, tacitly acknowledged this when they had to do an about face, and accuse Trotsky of minimizing the war danger and plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Republic, relying on such documents as the so-called "Clemenceau Thesis" and the Chamberlain slander.

And I would hardly consider the purging of the veteran commanders of the Red Army and Red Fleet (e.g., Tukhachevsky), the training of the Gestapo by NKVD instructors, and joint maneuvers between the Wehrmacht and Red Army, as measures that allowed the USSR "in the interwar years" to make the "development to fight the Germans". More to the point, the codicil to the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact that would have seen the Red Army fighting alongside the Wehrmacht in the event that France and Britain launched an offensive against Germany any time between September 1939 and June 1941 can hardly be justified as a step to defend the USSR by preparing it to "fight the Germans".

(And before this becomes another attempt to cry "bourgeois propaganda", everything stated above can be verified by obtaining access to the Soviet archives in Moscow -- a fact I know first-hand.)

The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact did not in any way, shape or form foresee in a military cooperation against the British and French in the case of them attacking. It was a non-aggression treaty, nothing more. In fact, the British and French had rejected time and again several Soviet proposals for a joint alliance with the USSR. They brought it upon themselves, in the hope that the Nazis would attack the Soviet Union first.

[Osaginado]

The Soviet Union was diplomatically isolated, gravely wounded, had many enemies, and was preparing for the possibility of a second World War (which would ultimately come). To quote Stalin in 1931(?), "We are fifty or one-hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good upon this gap in ten years, or we will be crushed."

The same could definitely be said about the pre-Stalin period. In fact, it was worse. Between 1918 and 1922, the RSFSR was more than isolated, it was blockaded (which was one of the reasons that the famines of the period took place); it was more than wounded (but recovering), it was being being shot at and strangled not only by the various White armies (Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel, etc.), but also by 14 capitalist armies that invaded the fledgling Soviet republic (including Britain, the U.S., Japan, Germany and France). Obviously, the RSFSR had many enemies in this period -- like, every single capitalist country; it wasn't until the Stalin period that capitalist countries began to establish diplomatic relations. And when it came to preparing for another world war, that began with the organization of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1918.

[Osaginado]

The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact did not in any way, shape or form foresee in a military cooperation against the British and French in the case of them attacking. It was a non-aggression treaty, nothing more. In fact, the British and French had rejected time and again several Soviet proposals for a joint alliance with the USSR. They brought it upon themselves, in the hope that the Nazis would attack the Soviet Union first.

The codicil was not in the public text of the agreement. (As an aside, a codicil is similar to a "shelf agreement" that is signed between union officials and management in the process of contract negotiations.) It was "secret diplomacy" that built on previous military agreements between the two countries, such as the joint military exercises, exchanging of technology and experts, and the training programs. Incidentally, I'm not necessarily criticizing the Pact itself, only this particular codicil.

I could wildly speculate about ulterior motives for the Soviets signing this codicil, but I have no evidence or even an allusion that could give it ground on which to stand.

[United Marxist Nations]

The Soviet Union was diplomatically isolated, gravely wounded, had many enemies, and was preparing for the possibility of a second World War (which would ultimately come). To quote Stalin in 1931(?), "We are fifty or one-hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good upon this gap in ten years, or we will be crushed."

The same could definitely be said about the pre-Stalin period. In fact, it was worse. Between 1918 and 1922, the RSFSR was more than isolated, it was blockaded (which was one of the reasons that the famines of the period took place); it was more than wounded (but recovering), it was being being shot at and strangled not only by the various White armies (Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel, etc.), but also by 14 capitalist armies that invaded the fledgling Soviet republic (including Britain, the U.S., Japan, Germany and France). Obviously, the RSFSR had many enemies in this period -- like, every single capitalist country; it wasn't until the Stalin period that capitalist countries began to establish diplomatic relations. And when it came to preparing for another world war, that began with the organization of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in 1918.

And there wasn't any 'totalitarianism' in the Pre-Stalin period? Don't make me laugh.

[United Marxist Nations]

The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact did not in any way, shape or form foresee in a military cooperation against the British and French in the case of them attacking. It was a non-aggression treaty, nothing more. In fact, the British and French had rejected time and again several Soviet proposals for a joint alliance with the USSR. They brought it upon themselves, in the hope that the Nazis would attack the Soviet Union first.

The codicil was not in the public text of the agreement. (As an aside, a codicil is similar to a "shelf agreement" that is signed between union officials and management in the process of contract negotiations.) It was "secret diplomacy" that built on previous military agreements between the two countries, such as the joint military exercises, exchanging of technology and experts, and the training programs. Incidentally, I'm not necessarily criticizing the Pact itself, only this particular codicil.

I could wildly speculate about ulterior motives for the Soviets signing this codicil, but I have no evidence or even an allusion that could give it ground on which to stand.

As I said, it was to buy time. The Soviets weren't ready for war with the Nazis in 1939.

[United Marxist Nations]

Purge is exaggerated and Stalin actually won his war. Trotsky couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper Poland.

Zhukov won ww2 after stalin royally fucked up at the start, costing Russia tens of millions in lives.

So, Zhukov was the grand architect of the Soviet economy? No, he wasn't.

[Herskerstad]

Zhukov won ww2 after stalin royally fucked up at the start, costing Russia tens of millions in lives.

So, Zhukov was the grand architect of the Soviet economy? No, he wasn't.

He was one hell of a tactician, that has to be said.

[United Marxist Nations]

So, Zhukov was the grand architect of the Soviet economy? No, he wasn't.

He was one hell of a tactician, that has to be said.

Tactics weren't what won the war though.

[Genivaria]

He was one hell of a tactician, that has to be said.

Tactics weren't what won the war though.

It sure as hell wasn't the dead officers Stalin purged, whoops.

[United Marxist Nations]

Tactics weren't what won the war though.

It sure as hell wasn't the dead officers Stalin purged, whoops.

There is very little evidence that they would have had much impact on the overall progress of the war, as most of said officers were incompetent and poorly educated.

[Pandeeria]

He was one hell of a tactician, that has to be said.

Tactics weren't what won the war though.

Yes, yes, heavy industry and production are what won the war, which we can thank Stalin for industrializing the USSR at such an absolutely astronomical pace.

Regardless, it is undeniable that the Purge did severely fuck up the Soviet military, and that the Purges were both unnecessary and did far more harm.

[New Axiom]

Well, the Soviet Union wasn't even communist. They were Marxist-Leninist. Those are two completely different ideologies.

[United Marxist Nations]

Tactics weren't what won the war though.

Yes, yes, heavy industry and production are what won the war, which we can thank Stalin for industrializing the USSR at such an absolutely astronomical pace.

Regardless, it is undeniable that the Purge did severely fuck up the Soviet military, and that the Purges were both unnecessary and did far more harm.

Eh, I disagree that they fucked it up "severely", because, frankly, the Soviet military was already fucked up by rapid expansion of the officer corps leading to unfit officers.

I was more talking about moving industry out of danger, which was kind of the brainchild of Beria, Stalin, and Voroshilov together, but that works too.

[United Marxist Nations]

Well, the Soviet Union wasn't even communist. They were Marxist-Leninist. Those are two completely different ideologies.

Communism isn't an ideology. It is a system of economics. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology that recommends a way to achieve communism.